This morning I awoke, had to have help getting dressed, and immediately sat on the couch with heating pads on my lower back and across my shoulders. The pain in my back eventually faded to the point of tolerance, but the pain in my shoulders and neck remains.

I’m used to pain in my left shoulder. If I overuse it, it can hurt for days or even weeks afterward. But the tightness in my right shoulder is new. Turning my head is a slow process; tilting my head from side to side is even worse.

I’ve been in bed most of the day sleeping my way through a muscle relaxer, and now that I’m awake the pain in my shoulder is still there. I’m not sure if I slept through its efficacy or it just bounced right off without effect, but either way I’m back to putting the heating pad across my shoulders.

This started yesterday morning, and I didn’t think much about it, chalking it up to that old favorite, “sleeping on it wrong.” (What does that even mean, anyway? Does that mean that I’m going to have points taken off my grade for sleeping when I die? When are midterms? It would be nice to know when the final is, at least. Anyway …) But it was worse this morning so under the heating pad I went. Tylenol isn’t doing it much good either.

The end result is that I’m basically useless around the house today, which I dislike. I normally can’t do a LOT of stuff, but at least I keep house well, and today I can’t really even do that.

Maybe this should be chalked up to the mileage I’ve put on this body. I’m not a young man, by any stretch. But then again, neither am I old, although I think sometimes I’m closer to old than young. I haven’t really taken very good care of myself and I’ve come up with every excuse under the sun to avoid devoting the time to self-care that I should.

So I think later tonight there might be a walk around the complex to try and loosen up these stiff old bones. Besides, there’s Pokémon out there, and I’m not old yet.